Public Policy is social agreement written down as a universal guide for social action. We at The Policy ThinkShop share information so others can think and act in the best possible understanding of "The Public Interest."

Does your community relations model incorporate new technologies, social media and senior citizens? Why not? Is your marketing vision inclusive of recent technological change and all its potential? Do you see technology as something that is inherently for the young? Think again…

When it comes to community organizing, community building and solving local problems don’t leave seniors out. Do not assume that age alone is keeping baby boomers out of the social scene. According to PEW there is a growing potential in the way seniors are using new technology and it may have very positive implications for your community organizing goals …

As of April 2012, 53% of American adults ages 65 and older use the internet or email. Though these adults are still less likely than all other age groups to use the internet, the latest data represent the first time that half of seniors are going online. After several years of very little growth among this group, these gains are significant.

Overall, 82% of all American adults ages 18 and older say they use the internet or email at least occasionally, and 67% do so on a typical day.

Once online, most seniors make internet use a regular part of their lives.

For most online seniors, internet use is a daily fixture in their lives. Among internet users ages 65 and older, 70% use the internet on a typical day. (Overall, 82% of all adult internet users go online on an average day.)

After age 75, internet and broadband use drops off significantly.

Internet usage is much less prevalent among members of the “G.I. Generation” (adults who are currently ages 76 and older)1 than among other age groups. As of April 2012, internet adoption among this group has only reached 34%, while home broadband use has inched up to 21%.

Seven in ten seniors own a cell phone, up from 57% two years ago.

A growing share of seniors own a cell phone. Some 69% of adults ages 65 and older report that they have a mobile phone, up from 57% in May 2010. Even among those currently ages 76 and older, 56% report owning a cell phone of some kind, up from 47% of this generation in 2010. Despite these increases, however, older adults are less likely than other age groups to own these devices. Some 88% of all adults own a cell phone, including 95% of those ages 18-29.

One in three online seniors uses social networking sites like Facebook and LinkedIn.

Social networking site use among seniors has grown significantly over the past few years: From April 2009 to May 2011, for instance, social networking site use among internet users ages 65 and older grew 150%, from 13% in 2009 to 33% in 2011. As of February 2012, one third (34%) of internet users ages 65 and older use social networking sites such as Facebook, and 18% do so on a typical day. Among all adult internet users, 66% use social networking sites (including 86% of those ages 18-29), with 48% of adult internet users making use of these sites on a typical day.

By comparison, email use continues to be the bedrock of online communications for seniors. As of August 2011, 86% of internet users ages 65 and older use email, with 48% doing so on a typical day. Among all adult internet users, 91% use email, with 59% doing so on a typical day.”

“Marketing is rapidly becoming one of the most technology-dependent functions in business. In 2012 the research and consulting firm Gartner predicted that by 2017, a company’s chief marketing officer would be spending more on technology than its chief information officer was. That oft-quoted claim seems more credible every day.A new type of executive is emerging at the center of the transformation: the chief marketing technologist. CMTs are part strategist, part creative director, part technology leader, and part teacher. Although they have an array of titles—Kimberly-Clark has a “global head of marketing technology,” while SAP has a “business information officer for global marketing,” for example—they have a common job: aligning marketing technology with business goals, serving as a liaison to IT, and evaluating and choosing technology providers. About half are charged with helping craft new digital business models as well.Regardless of what they’re called, the best CMTs set a technology vision for marketing. They champion greater …”

Social Media is interactive, sustainable and deliciously repetitive … This means you can use it to promote and sustain messages, conversations and eventually more easily sustained marketing relationships with your customers.

The Policy ThinkShop brings your attention to this exemplary story about promoting in the age of social media …

“If you had a book coming out, and you were considering how to get people excited to buy it, read it, and talk about it, which would be most valuable to you:1 a 3-minute segment about your book which is long by TV news standards, including a close-up shot of the cover, on primetime CNN. . .2 a 1,000 word piece you wrote on a topic related to your book, published in the Sunday opinion section of America’s newspaper of record, the New York Times, which reaches the #6 most emailed piece on NYTimes.com within a day. . .3 a guest post you wrote, published on the blog of one lone dude in SF obsessed with fat loss, female orgasms, and lifting Russian kettle bells?If your goal was to cause a lightning storm of book sales, you should pick #3. I know—I did all three.”

The internet is nearly a quarter century old. Really. What is next? The conversation on what will follow has started and it is fascinating… The Policy ThinkShop brings you the following London Economist article from their blog “Babbage.”

It will open your eyes to the possibilities and limitations of how cloud computing, gps, the internet, etc., will shape how the world around us functions. Let us know what you think.

Your comments and interest in what the Policy ThinkShop provides will help us continue to provide this resource to you at no cost to you…

“BABBAGE is getting a little tired of all the hype surrounding the “internet of things” IoT. To judge from some of the more breathless claims, the IoT would seem to be just around the corner. The worst offenders, no surprise, are those who expect to profit most from embedding sensors in anything and everything, and connecting them wirelessly to servers in the cloud.The expectations are huge. Gartner, an IT consultancy in Connecticut, reckons some 26 billion devices will be connected to the internet by 2020. Another consultancy, ABI Research of New York, believes the number will be 30 billion, while Cisco Systems, a network-equipment firm in California, expects there to be no fewer than …”

The Policy ThinkShop Comments on Other Social Media: BIG BROTHER IS LISTENING AND SHARING

BIG DATA is changing the world. Because it is predominantly a high tech, expensive and rapidly changing business endeavor, governments have to collaborate, borrow and share in order to play in the BIG DATA game.

What are the implications for the relationship between government control and individual privacy and freedom? When government morphs into a global player, sharing and collecting on the open market your personal data, what are the implications for protecting your own interests in relations to the interests of corporate giants and world stage political actors who are protecting pursuing their own interests and wants?

“The power of information is in the eyes of the beholder–especially public opinion. What we know and think about what others know is crucial for the future of privacy in our societies and perhaps freedom itself.”

The Pew Foundation has an impressive network of websites promoting socially relevant and timely research that looks at emerging social trends and challenges in the areas of technology, social media, religion, politics, and others… The most recent issue addressing internet use, one of the main areas that Pew supports, includes a survey on internet use. The survey is important because we know, for obvious reasons, much about people using the internet but not so much about those absent from cyberspace. The report gives us interesting data and analysis on the nearly fifth of persons 18 years or older who by choice or constraint are not going online. This trend is interesting given the current explosion of handheld devises that make the internet ubiquitous and internet able gadgets an increasingly unavoidable necessity.

As you have become accustomed, The Policy ThinkShop does the research for you and provides a friendly place where you can come back and discuss what you found useful and relevant in your daily musings and/or work.

Be sure to come back and comment as your participation here will promote The Policy ThinkShop blog and keep our team working for you…

The full report is being provide here by The Policy ThinkShop. Enjoy: http://www.pewinternet.org/~/media//Files/Reports/2013/PIP_Offline%20adults_092513_PDF.pdf

“As of May 2013, 15% of American adults ages 18 and older do not use the internet or email.

Asked why they do not use the internet:

34% of non-internet users think the internet is just not relevant to them, saying they are not interested, do not want to use it, or have no need for it.

32% of non-internet users cite reasons tied to their sense that the internet is not very easy to use. These non-users say it is difficult or frustrating to go online, they are physically unable, or they are worried about other issues such as spam, spyware, and hackers. This figure is considerably higher than in earlier surveys.

19% of non-internet users cite the expense of owning a computer or paying for an internet connection.

7% of non-users cited a physical lack of availability or access to the internet.

Even among the 85% of adults who do go online, experiences connecting to the internet may vary widely. For instance, even though 76% of adults use the internet at home, 9% of adults use the internet but lack home access. These internet users cite many reasons for not having internet connections at home, most often relating to issues of affordability—some 42% mention financial issues such as not having a computer, or having a cheaper option outside the home.”

For those of us who have nothing to hide today, the idea that tomorrow’s leaders may be peeping at everything we do that we presume to be private is downright creepy! Indeed, the so called leak scandal in DC today is giving more and more people some pause.

Imagine that we continue to allow the government to peek in on our lives with impunity. Tomorrow, a government program that is partly privatized lands your most personal and private information in the hands of a leaker. But that leaker does not leak to the general public, he or she sells or uses your information for personal gain. The possibilities are no longer hypothetical. It all seems to be unraveling before our very eyes…

“‘WE WANT you to help us do this better,” asserted General Keith Alexander (pictured), the director of America’s National Security Agency (NSA), to hundreds of computer hackers at Black Hat, an annual information-security conference in Las Vegas on July 31st. General Alexander claimed that his agency’s mass-surveillance programmes had stopped 54 potential terrorist plots. He reassured the audience that their privacy was being protected. Still, there were a few heckles.

America’s spies have had a tough time since Edward Snowden, a former intelligence contractor, began leaking information that revealed the massive scale of NSA snooping. Indeed, just as General Alexander tried to charm the geeks, Britain’s Guardian newspaper published another leak by Mr Snowden. This one revealed a system called XKeyscore that lets the NSA glean emails, chats and browsing histories without specific authorisation. The intelligence agency confirmed the programme, but said it was lawful and essential.”

The now seemingly omnipresent digitalization of human communication is leading to unthinkable mountains of data which various economic, government and not for profit organizations seek to manipulate and put to good use. This new area of information management and data mining is referred to as “BIG DATA” and it is being discussed more frequently as more and more data becomes available more entities seek to take advantage of the knowledge it may yield and the advantages or profits it may make possible.

The Policy ThinkShop comments on an article on this topic below… you can follow the link to see the article we are commenting on for the whole story…

“Could it be that BIG D is logically for the BIG players with macro goals and great resources? By definition, BIG data belies the benefits of statistics and, perhaps, well designed analytic tools.”

What is this world coming to? Our use of technology to share thoughts and images is creating billion dollar companies and changing commerce. The internet economy and the gadgets that support it are impacting what we do, how we spend our money and how companies influence what we do and how we spend our money.

Yahoo is making an aggressive move to stay afloat with the cyber giants allowing it to tumble with the best…

Do you Yahoo and tumble?

“AT A recent conference, Ken Goldman, the chief financial officer of Yahoo, admitted that the internet giant had an aging audience and was looking for things to “make us cool again”. The firm’s senior executives appear to think Tumblr can give it a …”

Perhaps the internet is not so “internet.” Perhaps the worldwide web is not so wide…

The Chinese are flexing their keyboards and their massive capital and in their wake they are leaving internal and external competitors washed ashore. New, rising, Chinese companies are weaving a web between buyers and sellers in the largest populated market on earth–China.

The result is a leading internet, already, giant like a Chinese private company called “Alibaba.” It is peering beyond its borders as it forms relationships with such giants as Yahoo and, according to the London Economist, because of its sheer scale, it is able to keep internet “spiders” like the ones that are the life blood of giants like Google at bay. The Policy ThinkShop recommends the following Economist article for those who want to be in the know.

“In 1999 Trudy Dai used to spend all night sending e-mails from her friend Jack Ma’s apartment, trying to answer queries from American customers without letting on that she was Chinese. Ms Dai was one of the first dozen employees of Alibaba, an online listings service Mr Ma, a teacher, had just started. It was already having some success connecting small Chinese manufacturers to …”

What started as your kids chit chatting and “wasting time on their computer” is now one of the largest money making business in human history and is creating resources that are challenging the wold’s elite in philanthropy…. Such is the new “WWW” world our heads are in with our feet on the ground while we look up at a world that boggles (perhaps “googles”) the mind!

Mark Zuckerberg, 28, and Priscilla Chan, 27, gave 18 million shares of Facebook stock, valued at about $498.8-million, to the Silicon Valley Community Foundation to support education and health programs.

This is the young billionaire’s second large donation. In 2010, he pledged $100-million to establish Startup: Education, a foundation to support programs working to improve public schools in Newark, N.J.

Daily life is connected life, its rhythms driven by email, text messages, tweets and Facebook updates. Some worry that this new environment makes us isolated and lonely. But in Networked, Lee Rainie and Barry Wellman show how the large, loosely knit social circles of networked individuals expand opportunities for learning, problem solving, decision making and personal interaction. The new social operating system of “networked individualism” liberates us from the restrictions of tightly knit groups; it also requires us to develop networking skills and strategies, work on maintaining ties, and balance multiple overlapping networks.

In seemingly endless times of “trash talk” that led to an improbable and unpopular political victory, the newly minted president clamors: “Now arrives the hour of action.” Fleeting relief comes to the nation as the transition […]

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